Heading to Sacramento Wednesday to testify on California’s outrageous gasoline price spikes, I was looking for context to explain the $10 billion extra California drivers paid for their gasoline in 2015 compared to US drivers. Then I read the Star Wars series made $4.4 billion worldwide.

An oil oligopoly, anchored by four California oil refiners, that control 78% of the gasoline market, raked in more extra dollars at the pump in one year than one of the most successful movie franchises in history.

The Fair Political Practices Commission is promoting new lobbyist disclosure rules after massive spending by the oil industry at the end of the last legislative session killed a law that would have reduced petroleum use in California by 50%.

During Governor Jerry Brown’s days in Paris attending climate negotiations, he called for nothing less than a revolutionary shift away from “this heavy commodification of our entire existence.” What drives that commodification, he said, is individualism and oil. What’s needed is “a life not based on oil, and a life not based on so much emphasis on the individual as opposed to the common good.”

Is the tide turning against the oil industry when it comes to gas price manipulation? We might find out this week. Also, California's woeful support of mental health access will be aired, and possible solutions. Those and other meetings will be held, including topics such as closing the English learner gap, the rural digital divide and why do pipeline accidents persist?

At the end of California's last legislative's session, a mailer landed in thousands of mailboxes slamming an historic climate change proposal that would have slashed petroleum use in cars and trucks in half by 2030. It was sent by a grassrootsie-sounding group called the California Drivers Alliance. But in reality, it was just Big Oil's mouthpiece, Western States Petroleum Association.